AN: I feel like I always say that I don't know where a story comes from, but that's because I normally don't – I have absolutely no control over where my brain takes these characters! I was on a big angst trip a while back, reading a lot of stories that are absolutely amazing but heavy on the angst (if you haven't, go check out SylvieT, her stories are beautiful, if sad) and somehow, this was the result

Technically, this takes place between the season 15 finale and Immortality, but it's pretty much AU from some point after "Dead Air" or "Forget Me Not". Case wise, everything's happened, Finn's dead, Nick's gone, but I've ignored Brass leaving because I wanted him to be in charge of the investigation. Oh, and there's another big difference, pretty sure everyone will figure that one out quickly!

Title from Overpass Graffiti by Ed Sheeran, which was playing on repeat when I was working on this

Disclaimer: I don't own anything relating to CSI

Chapter 1

Sara puts the jar of printing powder back in her field kit and seals and signs the lifted prints in a clearly labeled envelope before glancing at her watch, sighing when she sees the time.

"You need to head out?" Greg asks from the other side of the room, and she looks over to find him flat on his back under the glass coffee table.

"What are you doing?" she asks with a frown, his position distracting her from the question.

"I saw some prints but turns out they were on the underside of the tabletop," he replies. "Figured someone might have moved it for some reason. Might not be relevant to the case, but as always, better safe than sorry."

"Oh." She pulls her phone out of her pocket. "I'm not bailing on you; I just need to call Jo."

He hums in reply, and she steps into the already processed bedroom for a little privacy before hitting Call.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Jo, sorry for the last-minute call, but I'm stuck at a scene," she starts. "Any way you can drop Mattie at daycare before you leave?"

There's some rustling over the line, and she thinks she can make out her son's babbling in the background. "Sure, no problem, you know that," Joelle says, her voice carrying the same amused tone it always has when she gets the same request. Which has been too often lately.

Sara leans against the wall and closes her eyes for a moment. "I know, but I always hate to ask." Not because she thinks it's an imposition – Joelle made it clear from the start that she was flexible – but because it robs her of the hour or two she usually gets with Mattie in the mornings.

"I know, but you don't need to. Before ten, like usual?"

"If you have things to do you can drop him off earlier."

"I know, but I don't have anywhere to be until after noon, and it's a nice day, so we might take the long way, through the park."

She knows which park Joelle's talking about. "I'm sure he'd like that."

"Let me know if you need me earlier tonight, but I do have a seminar until eight."

"I know, don't worry about it, it's just a scene that's taking a little longer to process than I was expecting, nothing big or anything," Sara assures her, hoping she's not jinxing them. "Can I talk to Mattie for a moment?"

"Sure."

She waits for a few seconds, so Joelle can hold the phone up to his ear. "Hi, baby."

"Mama!"

His excited voice makes her smile, like always. "Are you having breakfast?"

She listens to his mostly unintelligible babbling – making out a few words here and there – and then Joelle returns.

"He's eating with his entire face," she says, laughing. "I might have to give him a bath before we leave."

Sara laughs too. "Yeah, we're working on that, but it's slow going."

"We're not in any hurry, so it's not a big deal. But you probably need to get back to work…"

"You're right, I should." She sighs. "I'll see you tonight. Give Mattie a kiss for me."

"Will do, see you later."

She hangs up and returns to the living area.

"How's the little man doing?" Greg asks, still under the coffee table.

Sara moves to the desk tucked away in a corner, touching the space bar on the open laptop, with no result. "Good. I asked Jo to drop him off at daycare, so I'm all yours for as long as you need me."

"Appreciated. I wish D.B. would hurry up and hire someone so we wouldn't have to work late all the time, though…"

She just hums in agreement, since there's not much to say. With Nick and Finn gone… well, it's been a long couple of weeks.

The sound of her phone jolts her out of sleep and, blindly, Sara fumbles for it. "Sidle."

"Sara?"

She forces her eyes open at Jim's voice, glancing at the clock on the bedside table. Twenty past two – she's only been asleep for two hours. "Jim?"

"Sorry to wake you. I'm outside. Come let me in?"

She frowns at his words, trying to figure out why he's calling her with forty minutes left on the day shift and another eight hours before she's supposed to be on the clock. "Fine. I need ten minutes, but I have to pick Mattie up no later than six. Jo's got a seminar and won't be here until after eight."

"That's fine."

He hangs up before she can ask any more questions, and she hurries to put some clothes on before going to let him in. "Is there some big case both days and swing are working on?" she asks as she turns her back on him to go into the kitchen for something to eat. "I didn't leave the lab until after eleven. Wasn't there someone else you could call?"

"Sara."

The tone of his voice makes her turn, one hand half-outstretched towards the fridge, and the look on his face makes her breath pick up and something cold settle in her stomach. "What?"

"It's not a case." He takes a breath, visibly steeling himself before continuing. "Joelle's in the hospital. Someone found her in Vistas Park around ten this morning, knocked out. She only regained consciousness about forty-five minutes ago."

"Mattie?"

"We don't know. He wasn't with her, there was nothing found nearby to indicate she had a child with her, so it wasn't until she woke up that anyone realized he was missing."

Missing. No. "Maybe she had already dropped him off at the daycare?" Sara suggests, though she knows deep down that he would have checked first.

"She hadn't," he says with a shake of the head. "She says they were on their way there, that they took the long way through the park, and that someone must have attacked her from behind. I called, to make sure, but… he's not there."

She takes a deep breath, willing the instinct to panic away, and tries to let her investigator brain take over. "Did she see who it was? I know there's surveillance at the park, do you have the tapes? Did anyone…" She trails off when he raises his hands, indicating for her to stop.

"I only talked to her for a few minutes," he says gently. "I've requested all the CCTV footage from the park and surrounding streets, plus all businesses and traffic cams within ten blocks, hopefully they'll be at the lab before we even get there. We're going to canvas the area soon, talk to everyone, and an Amber alert is going out as we speak. We will find him, OK?"

She just nods, swallowing down the lump in her throat and blinking away the tears that are rising in her eyes. She can't fall apart. Mattie needs her to keep it together.

Suddenly, Jim is right in front of her, hands on her shoulders. "We have search dogs on the way to the park, we need something with Mattie's scent on it for them to track, OK?" he says, voice gentle.

"OK." She somehow makes her way to the hallway closet with the washer and dryer and finds the t-shirt he had on yesterday at the top of the hamper. On her way back, she darts into the bedroom and grabs her phone as well.

"Good," Jim tells her with a nod when she returns. "Do you have everything you need? Phone, keys?"

She looks around, locates her bag on a table and grabs it, making sure her keys are in the usual pocket, and then they're out the door. A cruiser is waiting behind Jim's unmarked car, and he gently pries the t-shirt out of her grasp, puts it into an evidence bag and hands it to the officer leaning against the car, saying a few words she can't hear. Then he ushers her into the passenger seat of his car.

The drive to PD is a blur. Sara stares out the side window, thoughts racing through her mind. Who would want to take her son? Is someone trying to get to her through him? Or just trying to hurt her? Who? Natalie, Basderic, Hannah… the former two are still in prison, as far as she knows, but could one of them still mastermind something from behind bars? And Hannah… she knows the girl left Las Vegas for the UK and Oxford shortly after her brother's death, could she be back? Would she go to such extremes?

Or was it completely random?

She's not sure what would be worse – a completely random abduction by someone she has no connection to would, no doubt, be more difficult to solve, but the idea of her baby in the hands of someone with an axe to grind, someone out to hurt her… Even the thought makes it harder to breathe, and she squeezes her eyes closed against it, for the first time in her life praying, pleading with a higher power she doesn't believe in that it's just a nightmare, that she'll wake up.

A gentle hand on her shoulder brings her back to the present, and she realizes that they're parked in the garage at PD and that Jim has gotten out of the car and opened her door.

"Come on," he says, and she nods and accepts the hand he holds out.

PD's bustling, like always, people hurrying down the corridors, phones ringing in the distance. She follows Jim almost blindly, tuning out everything around her, until they're passing the dispatch room, which is filled to capacity – every seat is taken, and people are leaning against the walls around the room. Projected onto the far wall is a photo of Mattie that Jim himself took only last week, when they met for their weekly coffee/catch-up session at the park – the same park Mattie was taken from.

Sara doesn't even realize that she's stopped until she feels the cool glass against the palm of her hand as she unconsciously reaches for him, longing for the simplicity of that day. Her son's shrieking laughter as Jim pushed him higher and higher in the baby swing fills her mind, and she has to close her eyes for a moment.

"Crawford's got it handled."

She looks over at Jim's voice and realizes that he must have thought she was about to burst into the room. She considers objecting, but can't find the words, so she just nods and lets him lead her away.

He bustles her onto the couch in his office before disappearing for a moment. When he returns, he has a paper mug of coffee and a slightly wilted looking sandwich in his hands. "Not exactly Michelin standard, but it's the best I can do."

Sara manages a half-smile, taking a small sip of the coffee and putting the sandwich down on the table in front of her. "Not really hungry," she says, surprised that her voice comes out steady.

"I know," he replies. "But you need to eat. You won't be any good to Mattie if you collapse from hunger."

His harsh words should hurt, maybe, but she just feels… numb.

"Please."

The pleading note in his voice makes her eyes snap up, and for a moment, before he turns away, she can see the raw hurt in his eyes that she knows must be reflected in her own. He loves Mattie too, she knows that.

"OK."

She has no idea what's on the sandwich, can't tell what it tastes like, but she manages to swallow down all of it anyway. The coffee, she drags out a little, sipping the hot liquid slowly.

The harsh sound of a phone ringing has her scrambling for her cell, but it's Jim's.

"Hello? Oh, good… yeah, she's here with me… I understand… I assume you won't need a ride from the airport, but let me know when you're on your way… yeah, talk to you soon."

Try as she might, she can't figure out who he could be talking to. Luckily, he saves her from having to ponder it too much.

"I called Catherine," he explains after hanging up, and there's a moment of relief, because Catherine means the FBI, and the FBI have more resources and are much better equipped to handle cases like this than the LVPD.

But it is just a moment.

"She's in Houston on a case," Jim continues. "Can't get out of there for a few hours, but she's getting the wheels moving here in the meantime."

"OK, that's good." Sara nods to herself before taking a breath and looking up to meet his eyes. "You can't keep me here, Jim, I have to do something."

He immediately shakes his head. "No. You know you have to be hands-off on this if we ever want to get a conviction."

"I don't care about a conviction!" she exclaims. "I just want my son back."

"I know," he assures her, reaching out to squeeze her arm. "I know. But there's nothing you can do right now, OK? Crawford's taking everyone available out as soon as he's done with the run through – the park will be crawling with officers talking to everyone they can find, going door to door. Ecklie's called an all-hands on deck, everyone at the lab will be going through the surveillance footage as soon as it gets there. I put a trace on your phone, and all calls will be recorded, in case it's a kidnapping for ransom – the best thing you can do is stay put."

She opens her mouth to object.

"Sara!"

They both look up at the exclamation, finding a disheveled Joelle in the doorway, a young, harried looking police officer trailing behind her.

"I'm sorry, Captain, I tried to…"

"It's fine, Harris," Jim waves him off.

"What are you doing here, Jo?" Sara asks, getting to her feet. "You should be at the hospital."

"I discharged myself, I couldn't just stay there, I had to do something." She pauses, tears welling up in her eyes. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I didn't…"

Pushing her own anguish aside for a moment, Sara crosses the few feet between them and gathers the younger woman into her arms.

"It's not your fault, Jo, it's not your fault."

They cling to each other for a long moment, giving and receiving a certain amount of comfort, until Joelle's tears dry up.

"Come on, sit down," Sara tells her when she pulls back. "What did the doctors say? Do you have a concussion?"

Joelle obediently follows her to the couch and slumps down on it. "A mild one. As long as I don't sleep for a few hours, and go back in if the pain gets worse or I have any other symptoms from this list they gave me, I should be fine."

"Jo…" Sara sighs.

"What was I supposed to do? Hole up in a hospital room while Mattie's out there somewhere?"

She holds back further reprimand, because she knows, if the tables were turned and she was the one who had been knocked out, there's no way she would have stayed at the hospital, no matter what the doctors said.

"We'll keep an eye on her," Jim pipes in. "And I will personally take her back to the hospital at any sign something's not right."

Joelle gives him an annoyed look, but he just smiles back.

"He's right," Sara says. "You can stay here, but you have to tell us if you start feeling worse, OK?"

Joelle nods. "I will. Promise."

"Now," Jim says, pulling one of the chairs from his desk over to the table in front of the couch. "We need go through what happened this morning, do you think you're up for that?"

"Of course, that's why I had to leave the hospital – I want to help."

Jim nods and puts a recorder down on the table between them. "Good, good. So, start from the beginning."

"OK." Joelle frowns as she gathers her thoughts. "Mattie woke up a little before six thirty. I got him dressed and put him in his playpen while I made breakfast, then we both ate, and you called." She glances at Sara, and she nods.

"You called?" Jim asks.

"Yeah, Greg and I were processing the scene in Seven Hills," Sara explains. She can't believe it was just a few hours ago. "I realized we wouldn't finish before the end of shift, so I called to ask Jo to take Mattie to daycare so I could help Greg wrap up."

"OK." He turns back to Joelle. "And then what happened?"

"Um, we finished breakfast," she continues. "Mattie got food all over his clothes and himself, so I gave him a quick bath. Then we just hung out for a while. We left the house a little after nine, I think. Since the weather was nice, I decided to take the long way to the daycare center, through the park…" She trails off, swallows.

"It's OK, Jo," Sara says, taking her hand and squeezing it. "Just go through what you remember."

"So, we got to the park. I met Jelena and Petra, they were out with the kids, we talked for a little while, then they left, and I checked my email and sent a text to my mom… we continued through the park a few minutes later, and I guess that's when it happened." She turns to Sara with a pleading look. "I don't remember what happened, everything just… went black, and then I woke up in the hospital."

"Don't worry about it," Sara assures her. "It's not your fault."

"Did you notice anything strange in the park?" Jim asks. "Did you meet anyone you haven't seen before, did anyone show an interest in Mattie, maybe?"

She shakes her head. "No. There weren't that many people around. There usually isn't, at that time of day." She pauses and frowns. "But there was this woman, she walked past us just before I was… attacked. She didn't do anything, though, but I… I don't know, I got a weird feeling, like she was watching us too intently. I've never seen her before."

"Do you think you would recognize her if you saw her again? Could you maybe describe her to a sketch artist?"

"Oh, I don't know." She hesitates. "I really only saw her for a moment… but I can try."

"Good, I'll get someone in here to do that." Jim turns the recorder off and grabs a notepad and pencil. "Now, the two girls you said you talked to, what were their names?"

Joelle provides them, along with phone numbers and addresses, and he writes them down before standing.

"OK, ladies, I am going to go arrange for a sketch artist and get someone to bring these two possible witnesses in here," he says, giving Sara a stern look. "Can I leave you alone for a little while, or are you going to bail on me?"

Part of her does want to get out there, but, really, she knows Jim is right. She doesn't have to like it, though.

"We'll stay here," she promises, meeting his eyes when he scrutinizes her.

"Good. I shouldn't be too long."

With that, he leaves the office, and Sara leans back against the couch, letting out a long breath. A moment later, she feels Joelle squeeze her hand and offers a weak smile.

"They'll find him," the younger woman says with more conviction than Sara can have in that moment. "They will."

AN: I honestly wasn't planning two kid fics (or three, I guess, with Buddyflies) in a row – the third story I mentioned at the end of Buddyflies (which I'll post after this one) was written between this and "With Every Word…", but I respect the vote!